


Limbo

by OhNoItsOikawa



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angels and Demons, M/M, Magic AU, Past Character Death, Slow Burn, a little government conspiracy anyone?, i guess, necromancy and other such fun things, the word witch used as a gender neutral term
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 23:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19755622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhNoItsOikawa/pseuds/OhNoItsOikawa
Summary: Kuroo Tetsurou is an elemental arena athlete benched for a shoulder injury that just won't heal, and Oikawa Tooru is just the witch to help (in theory).





	1. In Too Deep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behold the product of me reading a Steven King novel and not liking the ending, and also maybe getting a free trial on Amazon just to watch Good Omens (which was really good but giving Amazon any amount of money goes against my moral code). Excuse my messy attempt at a magic system, I'm really trying my best here! Here's hoping we can all have a fun, sexy time!

When Tetsurou finds himself at the weathered wooden door of a cottage he’s never been to before, he isn’t surprised. He’s never been here, but he knows it like he knows the street he grew up on. A strong gust of wind blows through the clearing the cottage occupies, rustling what few leaves remain on the gnarled branches of the trees bordering the overgrown lawn. The cottage’s aging support beams creak and moan in protest, struggling to keep the dilapidated building upright.

“You’re here again,” Somebody says from behind him in a voice that’s impossibly familiar, “You shouldn’t be.”

Tetsurou knows not to turn around, nor to reply. He doesn’t know what will happen if he does, but he does know that it won’t be good.

The groaning starts before the person can say anything else. Tetsurou hates that sound – it’s empty and pained, occasionally accompanied by stilted shuffling. He tries to run, to get away from whatever is behind that door, but the ground falls out from under him.

Something heavy sits on his chest. It’s dirt, he knows, because he knows this place too. This is where he was buried. He doesn’t want to, but his body sits up, forcing the dirt off of him.

“Please leave,” The person says, his voice reverberating throughout the forest Tetsurou has been buried in, “You shouldn’t be here.”

_I know_ , Tetsurou wants to say, but his tongue feels too big in his mouth and there’s dirt in his lungs, _I want to leave_.

All of the trees look as though they’re trying to get away too, twisted at impossible angles trying to get away from Tetsurou, or whatever is there with him. He knows what’s coming next – he’s lived it all before, many, many times – but he still jumps at the loud clap of thunder that shakes the very ground he’s buried in.

A crow lands on one of the twisted branches, unperturbed by the slowly blackening sky and carrying something that Tetsurou recognizes as a calla lily – sometimes used for purification ceremonies.

“Please,” The person begs one last time before the sky turns completely black and the screaming starts. Horrible, bloodcurdling screams that force every hair on Tetsurou’s body to stand on end. He hates the screaming the most – the way it sounds as though it’s being forcefully ripped out of whoever is doing it, making Tetsurou feel almost like he might go mad if it doesn’t stop.

_Please_ , he wants to say, _I don’t want to be here_.

But it’s too late. The groaning starts again, this time coming out of his own mouth. Tetsurou watches as the crow drops the calla lily, letting it fall onto the muddy ground before it flies away, tainting its pure white petals.

The person appears behind him and puts his hands on Tetsurou’s shoulders, pushing him back into his grave.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” He says, and Tetsurou wants to say, _I know_ , but all he can do is groan that empty, pained groan that he heard inside the cottage. “It’ll be coming for you now.”

_What_ , Tetsurou tries to say, _what’s coming?_

“You should never have come here. It’ll be coming for you now, and I can’t stop it.”

Tetsurou gasps awake, drenched in a cold sweat. He hates that dream, and he has it far more often than he’d like – especially lately. Before his accident, he’d had it maybe once or twice a year – three, if he was particularly unlucky or stressed out. He’s had it seven times in four months, and three of those have been within the last week.

“Maybe you have a higher affinity for pure magic than you thought,” Kenma suggests when Tetsurou caves and decides to ask him about it, “It seems a bit too detailed for a dream. It could be untapped future sight.”

Tetsurou feels his blood run cold.

“Or it could just be your subconscious trying to work out your complicated feelings about mortality and the trauma you’re harboring from experiencing the death of someone close to you at a young age.”

“Jesus, Kenma, you could have started with that!” He yells, feeling as though he lost ten years off of his life from the first comment.

If it’s just a dream, there’s nothing to worry about – even if it does dig up some uncomfortable truths about his childhood experiences with death. If it isn’t, well… Dying isn’t exactly on the agenda, but who is he to challenge death and expect to come out winning? That sort of thing is reserved for the arrogant and deranged. He’d much prefer the comfy couch of a therapist’s office to the grave, though.

Kenma sighs and looks at Tetsurou through half-lidded eyes that make him look almost as exhausted as Tetsurou feels.

“I could project myself onto your dreamscape if you’re really so freaked out about it, but…” He trails off, and Tetsurou catches the brief flick of his eyes toward the book he’d been reading when Tetsurou had burst in and demanded an impromptu dream interpretation way before the start of Kenma’s business hours (or hour, rather).

“But?” Tetsurou prompts when it becomes clear that Kenma has no intention of finishing his sentence.

Kenma wrinkles his nose, “I really don’t want to.”

Tetsurou slumps forward and rests his cheek on the cool wood of Kenma’s kitchen table, “Love you too, Kenma.”

“Hey, projecting myself onto your dreamscape means I don’t get any sleep, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll have the same dream a fourth time this week anyway.”

Tetsurou blinks up at his friend a few times. _No guarantee, sure, but at the rate this is going…_

“Plus, I hate projection. It makes me feel weird and getting used to having a physical body again is harder than you think.”

Tetsurou would make a joke about Kenma having never been used to having a physical body in the first place were he in a better mood.

“What if it really is future sight though?” He asks, “I’m going to die and get resurrected or something?”

“Not necessarily. Putting aside the fact that I’m pretty sure resurrecting a human being is impossible, future sight isn’t really meant to be taken at face value. If it is about resurrection you could just have a strong spiritual bond with the person getting resurrected, or maybe even the resurrect… er?” Kenma frowns, “Resurrecterer?”

Tetsurou gives him a lazy one-sided shrug, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Kenma looks up and thinks for a second.

“The dark witch.” He decides, and Tetsurou nods his approval. He’s never heard of a dark witch, and he doubts very much that Kenma has either, but it has a nice ring to it. Better than pure witch, or healing witch at least. He might be biased, though – being an elemental witch himself. Not that he calls himself that. He fancies himself more of an athlete than a witch – or did, anyway. Nowadays he feels more like a lab rat.

“I mean, unless you’re planning on dabbling in the dark arts or dying, it looks like I’m taking the world’s shortest dirt nap.” He says, and Kenma’s mouth turns up ever so slightly before he catches himself.

“Who would even resurrect you, though?”

“I don’t know,” Tetsurou says, considering for the very first time that the list of people that might miss him that much is rather short. Like, maybe even one person short. “Maybe as my best friend you’ll be so overcome with grief at my untimely passing that-”

“Yeah, no.” Kenma interrupts immediately, “Sorry. Necromancy seems like a lot of work.”

Tetsurou breathes a half-hearted laugh, “You’re really set on crushing my spirits today, huh?”

“Not at all. You just like setting yourself up for disappointment.”

“That I do,” Tetsurou agrees, pushing his chair away from the table with a terrible scraping sound that makes Kenma’s eye twitch. “I’m gonna get going, I think.”

“Sugawara again?” Kenma asks as if he doesn’t already know.

“Who else? It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do anyway.”

For a moment, Kenma looks like he wants to say something else, but a minute shake of his head clears the thought from his mind, and he levitates Tetsurou his spare keys without a word.

Suga’s office is on the second floor of a building dedicated to witches of the healing variety (and one completely normal dentist named David who got the rent dirt cheap because the landlady liked him, but that’s a story for another time). The inside is stark white and lit like a stadium at all times despite the windows covering the entirety of the west side of the building, making it so that Tetsurou has to squint as he walks the corridors, especially around the early and mid-afternoon when the sunlight is almost unbearably bright on the plain white tiles and walls. Suga doesn’t mind it, or so he says, but the navy-blue blinds he got for his office not a week after renting it tell a different story.

“You look like you didn’t sleep a wink,” Suga says in lieu of a proper greeting the second Tetsurou steps foot into his office.

“Nice to see you too.”

Suga’s eyes follow Tetsurou as he makes his way across the room and takes his usual seat on the plastic-covered examination table in the far-left corner. The room is sparse, as most doctors’ offices are, and far larger than Suga probably needs it to be. Once, long before Tetsurou had become a regular enough guest in this room to know the exact amount of ceiling tiles there are, he’d jokingly suggested that Suga could hold an aerobics class in it.

“I hope you said hi to Himari on your way in,” Suga says, taking a fresh pair of latex gloves out of the box on his desk and pulling them on with a snap that makes Tetsurou’s skin crawl. “She has the biggest crush on you, you know.”

“Yeah, I do know. That’s exactly why I didn’t.”

Suga puts a hand on his hip, “Oh, so you can steal the hearts of my receptionists, but you can’t take responsibility, huh? Typical.”

“Nobody’s stealing any hearts here,” Tetsurou assures him, watching as Suga picks up what Tetsurou assumes is his file and strides over to the examination table.

“I beg to differ. Even half of the witches in this place would kill for some attention from Mr. Famous Elemental Arena Athlete himself.”

“But fame means nothing to you, of course.”

“Mmm, it might if you were my type.”

Tetsurou places a hand over his heart, “Ouch.”

“Hey, I like a man who looks like he could chop wood,” Suga tells him, as if Tetsurou doesn’t already know. His eyes float over to the picture on Suga’s desk – one from the recent trip he, Daichi and Asahi took down to some lake that Tetsurou had to hear all about a few weeks back. “Maybe raise a few kids. Good, solid, dependable. You just look a bit like you’d join a rock band and break my heart.”

“Good to know,” Tetsurou says, an amused smile tugging at his lips.

Suga puts the file down after a quick once-over and turns his full attention to Tetsurou, “Now, take your shirt off please.”

“Woah, after you just shot me down? That’s cold.”

Suga laughs pleasantly and Tetsurou does as he’s instructed. Or tries to, anyway. He gets about halfway before he hits the critical point of having lifted his left arm too high. It falls back to his side uselessly, and Tetsurou tries not to wince as a sharp pain shoots down his arm.

Suga moves to help Tetsurou with the shirt in that practiced way of his like it’s no big deal. There’s no pity in his eyes, and no hesitation in the way he sends gentle waves of healing magic into Tetsurou’s shoulder to ease the torn muscles through the movement and make the pain far more bearable – at least temporarily. It’s the natural thing for him to do as a healing witch, Tetsurou knows, but he’s humiliated just the same. He’d rather have gritted his teeth and pulled his useless left arm out of the shirt himself, even if that did mean that the aching would keep him up all night.

Suga lets out a frustrated huff as he steps back, looking pointedly at Tetsurou.

“You’ll give me a headache if you keep that up,” He says, and Tetsurou gives him that awkward one-sided shrug he’s had to get used to.

“I told you to stop using insight on me.”

“And I told you that I wouldn’t have to if you would actually tell me when you’re in pain, but it looks like you’re determined to give me a headache either way.”

Tetsurou doesn’t argue, letting Suga go through the motions of their weekly visit. Patient and gentle hands on Tetsurou’s perpetually aching shoulder, a few questions here and there, and enough healing magic to keep him sane for a good while (in theory).

Tetsurou doesn't look because he never does. He knows what it looks like already - shiny, raised flesh, no longer angry and red but every bit as tightly stretched over his collar bone and shoulder as it was when the wounds were fresh. It looks wrong to him, and he can never seem to shake that feeling when he sees it. So he doesn't look.

When he’s done, Suga helps Tetsurou get his shirt back on again without a word, and Tetsurou can see that he’s thinking hard about something. He hops up next to Tetsurou on the table, pale hands clasped in his lap and eyes fixed firmly on the pure white tiles of his office’s floor.

“You know,” He begins, “There was someone I knew a few years back who told me, ‘there’s a solution to every problem, you just have to find it,’ and I think about that a lot.” He takes a deep breath and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, “Sometimes I wonder if he was right. That there really is a solution out there to every problem. And then I wonder if maybe I’m just not looking hard enough, or if maybe I’m just not the right person to find it. He seemed so… confident. Like he knew he was right. Like he knew where to find all the solutions to these impossible problems.”

“Nobody knows everything, Suga.”

Suga sighs, “Look, I know you said-”

“And I meant it.” Tetsurou interrupts gently, “No offense, but I think I need to start focusing on other things now. You and I both know I’m never going to play again, so… I’ve gotta figure out what else is out there for me.”

He sees Suga’s shoulders fall out of the corner of his eye. Those words sounded so different out loud than they had in his head – more final, in a way. More damning. Some strange part of him feels exposed by those words – like he’s finally let the universe in on his deepest, darkest thoughts and fears. Like he’s opened Pandora’s box and allowed his worst nightmare to materialize in the real world instead of just existing inside his head.

“I kind of wish you hadn’t said that,” Suga says, sounding defeated in a way that makes Tetsurou’s heart ache.

“You and me both, trust me.”

Suga grips his hands tighter, his knuckles turning even whiter.

“If… if I were to tell you that I know of someone else who could, uh- who might be able to fix this, would you… would you see them?”

Tetsurou frowns, “What kind of a question is that?”

“It-”

“Look, I’d… I’d do pretty much anything if I genuinely thought it meant I could play again, but-”

“Anything?” Suga interrupts, meeting Tetsurou’s eyes with a look in his that makes the air around them suddenly feel completely different.

“Well, yeah,” Tetsurou replies, and though he assumes the _within reason_ part of that statement is clear to both of them, he can’t shake the feeling that he should have said it anyway.

Suga pushes himself off of the examination table and makes his way quickly toward his desk where he scribbles something onto a piece of scrap paper. Tetsurou knows what that means, and now he’s really starting to think that omitting the _within reason_ part of what he said was a bad idea.

The walls have eyes, Tetsurou knows, and whatever is written on this little piece of paper could get them both into a lot of trouble. More trouble than Tetsurou is worth, he’s sure.

Suga puts the scrap paper into Tetsurou’s open hand, silent determination in his eyes. Tetsurou hesitates in closing his hand around it, but Suga closes it for him before he can think to reject it.

“I know what I’m doing, Kuroo.” He says, and there’s a gentle kindness in the way his hand stays closed around Tetsurou’s that makes Tetsurou want to burn the paper in his hand to ash before anything bad can come from it. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I’ve finally decided. So, take it, please.”

He does. He takes the little piece of scrap paper and puts it in his pocket, and he feels it there the whole way home. He feels it sitting in his jacket pocket like a bomb that might go off any second, impossibly heavy and making his heart beat a million miles an hour. And when he takes it out again in the privacy of his apartment, where the walls don’t have eyes and nothing can hurt him, he knows that there’s no going back. He’d made his decision already when he hadn’t summoned the fire magic into his palm and burned the damn thing the second Suga had given it to him, and now they’re in too deep.

_There’s a dead man I think you should see_ , it reads, the words looking completely wrong written in Suga’s pretty cursive lettering. Following those words is a vague address that Tetsurou knows will lead him a few hours from home, and underneath that Suga wrote, _I think you’ll do him some good too. Good luck._

In too deep doesn’t even begin to cover it, Tetsurou thinks. Not even close.


	2. It's Going to Rain Again

It’s going to rain again. The clouds are rolling in over the mountains and the moisture hanging in the air is making Tooru’s hair frizzy. The first droplets won’t fall for a while yet, but when they do, Tooru is sure the sun-baked pavement will be steaming with it.

_Thank god the convenience store has air conditioning._

“Hot out, isn’t it?” The clerk at the checkout counter says, smiling in that overly friendly way that people who work in customer service often do. It makes Tooru uneasy, but he smiles back nonetheless and nods as the clerk finishes ringing up his groceries. “My grandmother used to say that the rain washes all of our sins away. Now, I don’t know about that, but it sure does help with the heat, anyway. That’ll be seven hundred, please.”

Tooru puts the money onto the counter instead of into the clerk’s outstretched hand, having eyed the way he was wiping his sweaty hands on his filthy apron while Tooru was shopping. The thought of brushing hands with him makes Tooru cringe. It’s all he can do to flash one last smile at the clerk’s cheerful, ‘Come again soon!’ and quickly escape into the humid heat of the afternoon with his groceries.

Tooru all but runs in the direction of his car – parked on the far end of the parking lot because some of the townies like to come out and stare at him from across the street like he’s some sort of freak show whenever one of them spots it. There’s nothing he hates more than that.

“Hey, Mr. Oikawa!”

Well, maybe not nothing.

“Shouldn’t you be in school or something, Touma?” Tooru asks, his exasperation at being caught right before he reached his car seeping into his tone. Touma seems not to notice, or, if he does, he seems not to care.

“Nope! School let out last week.” He informs Tooru cheerfully, rocking back and forth on his heels as he talks.

“Okay, well I’m sure there’s something you could do other than loitering in the parking lot. Something actually productive, maybe.”

“You know,” Touma says, ignoring Tooru’s suggestion as though he hadn’t even heard it at all, “My mom says you’re a witch.”

Tooru pops the trunk of his car and drops the grocery bags into it, hoping that Touma didn’t catch the way his eyes widened when the boy said that. He feels a droplet of sweat trickle down the back of his neck, and his mouth is starting to feel sticky with how parched it is.

He clears his throat, “There’s no such thing as witches. Your mother ought to know that.”

Touma shakes his head, “See, she says she heard it from Mrs. Kobayashi, who heard it from the priest on the other side of town. ‘Priests don’t lie,’ she said. Told me not to talk to you anymore because you might curse the farmlands and leave us all to starve.”

_At this rate, I really might._

Tooru catches the crowd forming across the street in his peripheral vision as he pulls the trunk closed, having to slam it twice to get it to actually stay shut. It’s getting old, like everything he owns nowadays.

“Look,” He sighs, leaning against the side of his car, “I don’t know where this priest is getting his information, but I am most certainly _not_ a witch, and even if I was, I wouldn’t ‘curse the farmlands’ or whatever nonsense like that. In case they’ve forgotten, I live here too. If I did curse the farmlands, I’d probably also starve.”

Touma shakes his head again. His unruly black curls fall across his forehead with the movement, and some of the individual strands stay stuck to the sweat there.

“Nuh-uh, witches can grow food with magic.” He says, as if he knows that for a fact.

“And yet here I am buying groceries like everyone else.”

Touma shrugs, “Could just be a cover.”

Tooru would laugh if the distinct image of him being burned at the stake wasn’t already occupying his mind.

_They’d all come to watch, too. Maybe bring their kids, have a picnic. Most exciting thing that’ll ever happen in this town, probably._

“Trust me, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be.” He says, moving to get into his car before this fourteen-year-old boy can trap him into saying anything suspicious enough to get the townies properly riled up.

“Why’d you move out here if you hate it so much, huh?” Touma asks, following closely behind Tooru like a particularly annoying duckling.

“Why are you asking a random stranger personal questions like that, huh?” Tooru shoots back, mimicking Touma’s intonation.

“My mom says I got curious cat’s disease.”

Tooru raises an amused eyebrow, “Do you, now?”

“Uh-huh. She said that’s why I’m the only one who’ll talk to you, being as you’re so weird. Some of the kids at my school said you live out in the woods because you steal children and eat them.”

“And how many children have been stolen so far?”

“Well… none, but-”

A clap of thunder startles them both, and Tooru can see that the clouds have crept far too close for his liking during his little excursion.

“I don’t have time for this,” He says, eyeing the dark mass heading their way warily, “I have to get home before the storm, so… as nice as this has been, I’m going to have to take a rain check on debunking the town rumors.”

Touma watches Tooru as he slides behind the steering wheel, wincing as the hot seat makes contact with the bare skin of his neck and forearms and seeps through his t-shirt alarmingly quickly. He doesn’t even dare touch the wheel yet.

Touma starts that rocking back and forth he does as Tooru leaves the door open to allow some fresh air into his car. The air conditioner doesn’t work as well as it used to, and Tooru will be damned if he’s going to sit in the same unbearably hot, thick air that’s been festering in his car for a half an hour already. The drive will be long enough as it is.

“You gonna come by again next week?” Touma asks.

“If I’m not too busy working, yes,” Tooru says non-committally, slotting his keys into the ignition and watching the ugly camo keychain swing back and forth as it settles.

“Can we talk again?”

The question catches Tooru off-guard.

“I don’t think your mother would like that very much.” He says, eyeing the boy in front of him curiously.

“Nobody said she’s gotta know.”

Tooru thinks about it for a second, finding it rather funny that Touma could even say that with a straight face with all of his mother’s peers gathered behind him not twenty meters away. But the image of the kid hanging around the parking lot of this stupid convenience store by himself all summer tugs at Tooru’s heartstrings more than he’d care to admit. Well, that and Touma just so happens to remind Tooru just a little bit of a certain someone he hasn’t seen in a while.

“Fine.” He concedes, and Touma’s eyes light up in a way that almost makes Tooru sad. “Just… get a hobby or something, okay? Nothing good ever came out of parking lot loitering.”

“Would you teach me how to be a witch?”

Tooru bites back a smile as he shuts his car door, “Bye, Touma.”

Tooru doesn’t beat the storm. The raindrops start hitting the asphalt ten minutes into his journey home, and now he knows that there’s no way in hell he isn’t going to have to spend at least twenty minutes mopping when he finally gets there. The thought almost makes him want to drive slower – to savor the sound of the wind rustling the leaves on the trees and the smell of the rain and the simple pleasure of being this close to real, live _people_ for once – but he reigns it in and carries on down the long stretch of road in front of him at the same speed, only slowing to take particularly sharp bends or to avoid fallen branches.

His car struggles a bit down the dirt road leading up to his home, the wheels sliding in the mud and just barely gaining enough traction to make it onto the lawn, and when they finally do, Tooru sighs and rests his forehead on the steering wheel, hoping that the rain will die down enough for him to make it to the door with his dignity. And maybe that his limbs will stop feeling like they’re made of lead.

No such luck in either case.

Tooru is soaked before he can even make it to the front door from his car – hair plastered to his forehead and dripping into his eyes, and t-shirt plastered to his skin in a way that makes every gust of wind feel ice cold through the wet fabric.

He slams the door shut behind him with a quick wave of his hand and stumbles his way through the dark into the kitchen, dropping his grocery bags haphazardly onto the counter along the way. He leans against the built-in cabinets and slides to the floor, the uncomfortable weight of his wet jeans a secondary concern to the fact that his entire body feels like it’s filled with wet sand. Heavy and cold and weighing him down so much that getting up feels impossible. It’s the lack of sleep, he knows – catching up to him all at once because the adrenaline that was fueling him ran dry after his conversation with Touma.

He can hear water dripping onto the floor from the leaks in the roof, and he knows that he needs to get the mop and buckets from the hallway closet, but he’s just so _tired_. He has half a mind to just… leave it. Leave it all, go to bed and deal with the consequences later. But, of course, that’s not an option. It never is. The last thing he needs is rotting floorboards to deal with on top of everything else.

What could once have been called a ‘fixer-upper’ of a cottage is now falling apart to the point that Tooru is sure it’s one structural failing away from being condemned, and Tooru knows it’s mostly his fault, but he’s a witch, not a handyman, and fixing rooves and broken gutters isn’t exactly in his skillset – nor will it be anytime soon, as things are going.

He sighs, pushes a cold hand through his wet hair to get it out of his eyes, and musters what little energy he has left in his system to push himself off of the floor using the cabinets and the kitchen counter as support. He starts numbly making his way toward the closet in the hallway, not bothering to put any of the lights on and noting with little interest that the wind is violently rustling the plastic bags he’s using to cover some of the empty windowpanes and making an awful racket. Between that and the dripping, Tooru can barely hear himself think. Not that it matters very much.

When he reaches the living room, a flash of lightning lights the inside of his home bright white for a split second. Tooru pauses where he stands, the image of his living room in that instant still in his mind’s eye. A part of him wishes it could have stayed that way – that the shadows hadn’t crawled back out from wherever they hide when the light comes, rooting themselves to his furniture and moving when they think he can’t see them.

_What a useless thought._

He shakes it off and starts walking again, the temperamental floorboards creaking with every other step as he makes his way down the dark hallway, but he pauses again as he hears something other than rain and wind and that incessant dripping. It’s faint – almost inaudible – but Tooru is sure that he heard something. He waits, barely breathing for fear that he might miss it, and then he hears it again – a quiet meow, coming from somewhere outside his bedroom window.

The mopping can wait.

“What are you doing here?” Tooru asks softly, holding his hand out for Suga’s familiar to push her head against. She purrs softly at the contact, allowing him to run his hand down the length of her body.

Luna has always looked strikingly similar to her witch, with her grey-silver fur and kind eyes. Tooru told Suga as much the day he’d helped him pick her out over six years ago when she was barely any bigger than the palm of Suga’s hand. Suga had beamed the whole day that day – even when Tooru had laughed at him for choosing such a cliched name as Luna for his familiar.

‘Terribly witchy,’ Tooru had told him, wrinkling his nose in mock distaste.

‘Like your names were any better.’

‘What’s wrong with E.T.?’

‘I’m not naming my life partner after a make-believe alien, Tooru.’

Tooru smiles at the memory. It feels like a different lifetime altogether now.

He’s pulled out of his nostalgic thoughts when his finger catches on something that isn’t soft fur and he’s forced to remember that she isn’t here just for a friendly visit.

Tucked neatly into the pouch on the back of her collar is a piece of paper with Tooru’s name on it. He pulls it out and runs his fingertip over the fine black letters. His skin starts getting warmer by the second. It’s charmed, he realizes. A weak charm, but a charm, nonetheless.

Tooru pours a little bit of magic into his fingertip and feels a surge of overwhelming emotion run through him. _Sadness, regret, longing, frustration, hope, fondness, love._ It’s all there, in Suga’s careful handwriting, and Tooru has to take a deep breath to collect himself before he unfolds the paper.

_Tooru,_

_I hope this little letter finds you well. As always, I miss you dearly and wish with my whole heart that I could escape the watchful eyes that bind us all to come see you, but you and I know better than anyone that our world is neither fair nor kind enough to permit such things._

_I trust that my charm (as poorly done as it is) told you more about how I feel about our separation than words on a page ever could, so I won’t bore you with a long preamble._

_Long story short, I have a problem. One that I’m certain only you could solve. I won’t put the details into this letter for obvious reasons, but I’m sure you’ll know what I mean when you see it. That said, I’ve decided to send a friend of mine your way. Discreetly, of course, because I’m not a maniac, but I understand the magnitude and potential danger of such a decision anyway._

_The fact is simply that I’m desperate and that I don’t know what else to do._

_He will be a few days, if everything goes well, and if you can find it in yourself to help him, please do._

_I love you always,_

_Suga_

Tooru reads it over three or four times before closing it again and immediately burning it. Luna stares up at him as the flames engulf the page, and he uses his free hand to give her a gentle but solemn pat on the head.

“Oh, Luna. He must have lost his mind.”

Someone is knocking on Tooru’s door. He’d worry that it was Suga’s friend if he didn’t already know immediately who it is by the fact that he sounds mere seconds away from knocking a hole into the fragile wood.

_It’s the fifteenth already?_

Tooru pulls himself up out of bed and stares forward, waiting for the stars to leave his vision before shuffling out of his bedroom and leaning against the wall for support as he makes his way to the door. It swings open easily with a quick gesture, leaving Tooru face to face with the person he least wants to see on any given day.

“What do you want, Ushiwaka?” He asks, trading the support of the wall for the support of his doorframe. He probably looks a mess, he thinks, with his pajamas and unkempt hair. Not that either of them cares at this point.

Ushiwaka blinks at him a few times, that dumb look on his face that he’s wont to give as a result of his nature. Tooru wants to throttle him, he really does, but he reigns it in.

“You were screaming, so I came to check on you.”

Everything comes flooding back to him all at once – the black sky, the dirt and blood under his fingernails, the cold skin, and… _someone else_. Someone else in _his_ dreamscape. Again.

“Oh.”

Tooru shakes his head, trying to clear it of the nightmare, and his eyes drift momentarily behind his visitor and across his overgrown lawn, across the now shin-length grass and weeds.

_That looks really bad, doesn’t it? When did it get that bad?_

“So… are you okay?”

Tooru rolls his eyes, “Yes, I’m okay. I don’t need _you_ worrying about me.”

“It’s my job,” Ushiwaka tells him, monotone and matter-of-factly. Tooru grits his teeth.

“Everything you say pisses me off somehow.”

“Sorry,” Ushiwaka says, and Tooru feels like he might scream. It’s like talking to a brick wall, only even less entertaining.

“Just- okay,” Tooru runs a hand through his hair, having to tug it through a knot or two, “I get it. It’s inspection day, and you’ve got boots to lick. As you can see, I’m not doing anything illegal and I’m not dead, so-”

“Why would you be dead?”

Tooru’s mouth very nearly falls open in shock.

“Are you genuinely stupid or something?” He asks, wishing not for the first time that he’d been assigned literally _any_ other council officer.

“No. I just don’t understand why you might die, seeing as nobody knows that you’re here and, to my knowledge, there isn’t any major threat to your life at the moment.”

“It must be so nice to be you, Ushiwaka,” Tooru says, tone as pleasant as it can be considering who he’s dealing with. “What I wouldn’t give to live my life with nothing but cotton between my ears, oblivious to those around me. The obedient lapdog of the council, never once thinking to question whether what I’m doing is right or wrong. It must be very peaceful.”

“I don’t need to question it.”

Any and all pleasantness falls from Tooru’s tone as his capacity for tolerating Ushiwaka’s blind loyalty and general stupidity hits an all-time low.

“No, of course you don’t,” Tooru says, well aware that his irritation is shining through in his facial expression. “Let’s just get this over and done with, shall we?”

Tooru steps aside and lets him in, well aware that his home looks like a bomb hit it. Ushiwaka doesn’t say anything about the state of things as he does his usual inspection of Tooru's home – the still-abandoned groceries strewn across the counter, the buckets Tooru had put out for the leaks – but he does look at Tooru in that way that he sometimes does. Like he wants to ask, like he wants to know, but he’s resigned to his and Tooru’s mutual silence. That suits Tooru just fine – he’s not at all prepared for those questions anyway.

He does wish that Ushiwaka wouldn’t look at him like that, though.

“Until next month, then,” Tooru says as he ushers Ushiwaka out the door again. Tooru stays standing in the doorway, expecting Ushiwaka to walk down to his car and drive away like he usually does, but Ushiwaka stops on the porch just before the stairs instead.

“Your nephew got into his high school of choice,” He says, back facing Tooru and posture stiff as ever. “I thought you might like to know.”

Those words hit Tooru like a freight train.

The world feels like it’s slowed to a halt, and Tooru feels like he’s forgotten how to breathe. For a moment, he's afraid he might throw up. He bites down hard on his lip - almost hard enough to draw blood - and forces his lungs to take in air again. Ushiwaka doesn’t move despite Tooru's silence. He stands there, stable in a way that Tooru isn’t, and Tooru finds a strange sort of comfort in that, even if it is just Ushiwaka.

“Thank you,” Tooru says after a small lifetime of quiet. His voice doesn’t sound like his own, somehow.

Ushiwaka nods in acknowledgment and takes one giant step down off of the porch instead of using the little wooden stairs.

Tooru watches him leave, and then he stays leaning against his doorframe for a while longer, watching the long grass and weeds sway in the breeze, thinking about Touma and how he reminds Tooru just a little bit of a certain someone he hasn’t seen in a while.

“Maybe I’m the one who’s lost his mind.”


	3. Contact

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this took longer than I thought it would! I meant to have it out last Saturday but everything had to get pushed back because I had a maths test. Life comes at you fast. Anyway, please enjoy!

When asked if he knows any humans, Tetsurou hesitates for just a second before groaning a reluctant, ‘Yes,’ and pulling up a number he knew he would regret keeping in his phone.

Tetsurou isn’t even one hundred percent sure that Yaku Morisuke counts as a human. A demon, maybe? A werewolf, but like, instead of turning into a wolf under the moonlight, he turns into a really pissed-off chihuahua? A rabid raccoon, perhaps?

“What do you want, Tetsurou?”

And Yaku looks nice, Tetsurou thinks. Like he just got off of work, with his tie a little loose and his hair a little messy. He puts his coffee on the table and pops the plastic lid to let it cool. Tetsurou notes that it’s plain black, and his stomach churns, but he isn’t sure if that’s because he’s always hated plain black coffee, or if it’s because he remembers a time when he was the one making it.

“Long time no see, huh? How’ve you been?” Tetsurou asks, his own paper cup warming his palms to the point of discomfort. Now he sort of wishes that he’d picked an outside table for them to sit at, where the warm evening breeze could make him feel slightly less like he’s being stifled and the harsh lighting of this dumb coffee shop wouldn’t be making him sweat so much.

_God, why am I sweating so much?_

“Blissfully happy now that I don’t have to pick your gym clothes up off of my bedroom floor anymore, thank you.”

Tetsurou winces, and the paper cup in his hands is really starting to feel like it’s only getting hotter with every passing second.

“Aw, I wasn’t that bad, was I? We had some good times.” He says, popping the lid on his own drink because it’s _definitely_ getting hotter and that should be _impossible_ , but his hands feel like they’re on fire and- and when he takes his hands off of the cup, the liquid inside stops boiling and he can see that the sides of the cup are singed.

Yaku seems not to notice.

“Yeah. We did.” He says, and Tetsurou realizes all at once and far too late that he wasn’t at all prepared for this. “How’s the, uh-”

Yaku taps lightly on his own left shoulder, gaze fixed somewhere behind Tetsurou’s head.

“Oh. It’s… well, it’s been better, to be honest.” Tetsurou shrugs, trying to keep his tone light.

“Still can’t play?”

“Yeah, no. It’s looking sort of… sort of permanent.”

The admission sucks even more the second time. Of course, there’s the voice in the back of Tetsurou’s head saying, _‘but, what if,’_ and it’s not that he doesn’t believe in Suga so much as it is that he knows for a fact that if he gets his hopes up and it doesn’t work out, the fall will be so much harder to get up from than it was in the first place – and he’s staggering as it is. 

Tetsurou looks up from his still way too hot cup of sugar-saturated coffee, and his and Yaku’s eyes meet. Yaku’s expression morphs into something far less detached.

“Sorry.” He says, and he sounds so much like he means it that Tetsurou has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself grounded.

“Nah, I’m- it’s cool,” Tetsurou replies, pulling open a sugar packet that he doesn’t need just to have something to do with his hands and spilling half of it across his end of the table, “I’m not like, super broken up about it. Anymore, anyway. Gotta make your peace with that sort of thing before it drives you crazy, you know?”

“Still.” Yaku insists, gaze falling back to that spot behind Tetsurou, “I… I know it meant a lot to you. Playing, that is.”

“Yeah, it did. That’s… it’s kind of funny, isn’t it? When you think about it.” Tetsurou says, though he never really found it very funny at all. “If it’d just happened three months earlier, we’d probably still be-”

“Yeah, maybe.” Yaku mumbles into his coffee, looking like he didn’t find it very funny either.

Tetsurou winces again, “Sorry about that.”

Yaku shakes his head, “I get it. Besides, if it wasn’t that, it would’ve been something else.”

“Like the fact that your mom hated me?” Tetsurou suggests, only half joking.

“She didn’t hate you. You just look like a bastard and she was understandably suspicious.”

Tetsurou feels some of the tension melt out of his shoulders.

“Can’t help the way I was born.” 

“Apparently not.”

A smile ghosts over Yaku’s lips, gone as quickly as it had come, and Tetsurou tries desperately not to think about how that smile reminded him of the thousands just like it that he’d seen during their time together – and then he tries not to think about the fact that he hasn’t seen Yaku smile like that in half a year, and what would have been their two year anniversary passed by a little over two weeks ago, no longer significant to either of them.

“Anyway,” Yaku says when Tetsurou doesn’t say anything because he’s trying so hard not to think, “I doubt you called me here just for a post-mortem on our relationship.”

“Ah, no. I, uh- I actually need to ask you a favor.”

Maybe it’s that Tetsurou had that dream again last night, somehow even more vivid than it ever has been. Or maybe it’s that he’s driving Yaku’s tiny, mustard-yellow car, struggling with the gear shift despite the fact that he learned how to drive in this very same car. Maybe it’s the ominous nature of Suga’s word choice – the words _dead man_ swimming around in Tetsurou’s head as he passes street sign after street sign warning him that he’s so many kilometers away from any sort of civilization. Maybe it’s all of those things at once, stacked on Tetsurou’s conscious mind like straws on a camel’s back – and he wonders what the last will be, briefly, but he doesn’t dare dwell on it for fear of reopening his personal Pandora’s box and allowing his darkest fears the room to materialize out here where he is truly alone.

Whatever it is – whatever cocktail of things weighing on Tetsurou’s mind as he drives – Tetsurou finds himself on edge. He’s on edge when he passes the last of the city’s tall buildings, and when he passes the last of the suburban areas surrounding it, and when he stops passing even the more remote communities. He’s on edge when the paved roads start becoming fewer and farther between, and the minutes passing between small rural towns and villages starts hitting double digits.

Tetsurou drives for longer than he thinks he’s ever driven before, passing trees and farmlands and dirt roads that start blurring together on the border of the seemingly endless road ahead of him. He stops to refill the tank and buy some water at one of the bigger towns somewhere around halfway, but the break doesn’t help at all with his driving fatigue, so he stops again at a town far smaller than the first to buy another bottle of water despite the half-full one still sitting in the cupholder of Yaku’s car.

Tetsurou has always wondered how it is that people can live in towns like this one – small enough that everyone must surely know each other, with one school and one doctor and one convenience store. To have the same friends all your life and have half of them move away after school to pursue something larger and the other half stay and get married to each other and have kids and die in the very same houses their parents did all that in.

The cashier who rings his water up looks like the stay here and die type.

“Lots of new people around here lately,” He says conversationally, putting Tetsurou’s single bottle of water into a plastic bag. Tetsurou chalks it up to habit and decides not to comment. “You’re the third one this week.”

“Oh, yeah? That’s interesting.” Tetsurou mumbles, fishing the change from his last stop out of his pocket and trying not to comment on the fact that this guy apparently thinks three new people is a lot.

“Sure is. Those other two were really strange though.”

“Uh-huh.”

The bell on top of the door chimes, bouncing off the walls of the store and catching both of their attention. Tetsurou glances over his shoulder at the two newcomers, feeling immediately like something isn’t quite right – but it’s not until the darker haired newcomer steps foot into the store that he realizes why exactly that is.

“Speak of the devil.” The cashier says, and Tetsurou would laugh if he weren’t already seriously considering just bolting out of the store.

“Uh,” Tetsurou looks over his shoulder again. Much to his relief, it seems that neither the darker haired newcomer nor the man with them have noticed his presence in the store. “Thanks for uh- the, um… bye.”

Tetsurou clumsily tries to shove all of his change into his pockets, only for half of it to clatter to the floor at what seems to him like the volume of a jet engine. He stares at it for a second before deciding to leave it and making his way toward the door.

“Wait! You forgot your-” The cashier yells, also way too loudly. Tetsurou grimaces and walks back to grab his bag out of the cashier’s hand, still watching the other two out of the corner of his eye just in case.

“Thanks.” He mumbles, and the cashier’s smile only does so much in the way of masking his confusion at Tetsurou’s sudden jitteriness. Tetsurou is certain that he’ll be added to the list of strange new people in this guy’s head, slotted in right next to the two far stranger new people currently browsing the frozen foods aisle. But it’s not like he’s ever going to see any of these people ever again anyway, so he figures that that’s alright.

For right now, his main concern is getting the fuck out of this store.

And he almost does – he almost manages to escape, unnoticed and unscathed, but the bell betrays him. The very same bell that had alerted him to the newcomers’ presence rings impossibly loudly throughout the store, and Tetsurou can feel their eyes on him before he even turns to look. He swallows thickly, fingers cold and numb around the door handle as he slowly turns his head.

His eyes meet the darker-haired newcomer’s, and his blood turns cold. The seconds seem to stretch into eternity as Tetsurou tries to force himself to move, to look away, to do anything but stand there and stare. His heart is pounding so loud in his ears that he can barely hear the music playing over the store’s speakers, and the seconds are still passing but his body just won’t move.

Eyes still locked with Tetsurou’s, the darker haired newcomer takes a step toward him. Tetsurou could swear that everything is moving in slow motion, but the fear he feels in that moment is all he needs to finally get his frozen limbs moving again, and before he knows it, he’s behind the wheel of Yaku’s car, feeling like he really might black out from the amount of pure adrenaline flowing through his veins.

He doesn’t dare look back until that town is behind him and he finally feels like he can breathe again, and the same thought goes through his head over and over again as he drives, his hands shaking a little and his heart still beating a million miles an hour.

_That was a demon._

Tetsurou’s hands are still shaking when he finally turns into the street specified in Suga’s note. He’s never really been one for believing in omens or signs from the universe or anything, but he can’t help but feel that what happened at that store wasn’t exactly the greatest start to this whole ordeal. Bad omens or no, though, he can’t be arsed to drive four and a half hours back home, so he figures that he might as well give it a shot. It’s not like that demon is going to follow him all the way out here anyway.

There wasn’t a street number in Suga’s note, which Tetsurou had found strange, but now that he’s driving along what he’s pretty sure is the right dirt road, he realizes that there wasn’t a street number because there aren’t any other houses on this street. Perhaps there had been, at one point – there’s evidence of one other building having been at least partly built – but now it’s just empty properties lined with trees and broken fences, with a solitary cottage at the end of the road.

Tetsurou rolls to a stop just before the road reaches a dead-end, eyeing the cottage to his left warily. It sits at the center of a decently large property, bordered on two sides by thick tree lines that Tetsurou assumes lead into the woods. The dark stones making up the cottage’s walls have been noticeably dislodged in several places by vines creeping toward the roof, and some of the windows have been covered with black garbage bags.

Tetsurou squints at the building. He could swear he’s seen it before somewhere. He knows for a fact that he’s never been here before, but there’s something about it that seems insanely familiar. He racks his brain but ultimately comes up short in terms of how and when and why he’s seen this place before. Probably just regular old déjà vu, he decides.

He camps out in the car for a good ten minutes before he finally works up the guts to walk up to the door, feeling somehow that this is the start of something important. And, he supposes, it is. Whether or not this guy can help him is going to decide how the rest of his life is going to go, whether he likes it or not. That thought scares the living shit out of him.

He takes a deep breath to steel himself before knocking as hard as he dares on the wooden door – splintered and chipped on the bottom and around the sides as though it’s been slammed many, many times.

_Strange._

Nothing happens. Tetsurou knocks again, a little louder.

He hears something clatter to the ground inside, followed by a faint curse and some frantic-sounding footsteps that stop just before the door.

“I swear to god, Ushiwaka, if that’s you again, I’m going to _start_ doing something illegal right the fuck now!” The man on the other side of the door yells. Tetsurou has to bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud.

The door cracks open.

A brown cowlick pops out first, followed shortly by a pair of strikingly pretty brown eyes, narrowed suspiciously at Tetsurou.

The man is a lot younger than Tetsurou was expecting – he’d been picturing some wizened old witch who’d run off into the woods to escape the confines of witch society and grow potatoes or something, maybe with a beard or an eyepatch. Certainly not a twenty-something year old.

“Who’re you?” The man with the pretty brown eyes asks, giving Tetsurou a once-over that makes him feel incredibly exposed.

“Um, not Ushiwaka.” He replies, taking a step back to give Mr. Cowlick some space. “But I also go by Kuroo Tetsurou, if that’s easier.”

The man raises an eyebrow at that, and then he disappears behind the door again. The door swings the rest of the way open, and Tetsurou is very suddenly faced with the harsh reality that it isn’t just this guy’s eyes that are pretty.

Tetsurou decides to add ‘cussing Suga out’ to his to-do list for when he gets home.

“You’re the one Suga sent, then.” The man with the pretty everything says, and Tetsurou doesn’t know what to do except nod because it wasn’t a question.

“And you’re-”

“Oikawa Tooru.” The man – Oikawa – interrupts. Tetsurou feels like he’s heard that name before somewhere, but just like with the cottage, he can’t seem to place it. “You should come in before someone sees you out here.”

Oikawa steps aside, and Tetsurou notices for the first time that he’s wearing pajamas at one in the afternoon.

The door slamming behind them the second Tetsurou steps over the threshold startles him, and he thinks that he catches a glimpse of a smile on Oikawa’s lips at his little jump, but he can’t be sure.

The cottage looks bigger on the inside than it did from the outside, and far less dilapidated. It is messy, though. Oikawa has to navigate his way through a maze of buckets – some nearing halfway full – and there’s evidence of abandoned tasks all over the place. Rags left bunched up on countertops, dishes in a basin filled with soapy water, a mop propped up against one of the living room walls, a book lying open on an armchair. It almost looks like whoever was doing those things disappeared into thin air before they could finish, over and over again.

Oikawa leads Tetsurou to a hallway just past the living room, kicking what looks to be a blanket to the side and stopping in front of an empty expanse of wall. He draws a symbol with his fingertip and a doorway appears, opening onto some creaky wooden steps that lead to the cottage’s basement. The door slams and immediately remasks itself, sealing them both inside. Tetsurou suddenly feels very claustrophobic.

“Relax, I’m not going to kill you or anything,” Oikawa says, falling onto an office chair behind a desk in the corner of the room. He levitates a stack of books off of a wooden bench and gestures for Tetsurou to sit.

“Aren’t you?” Tetsurou asks, taking his sweet ass time getting to the bench and drinking in the details of the room. It’s pretty well lit for a basement – enough that Tetsurou can make out the titles of books all the way across the room. Well, most of them anyway. Some are in what appears to be Latin, which Tetsurou most certainly does _not_ know how to read but has seen in an advanced spellbook or two from Kenma’s collection.

_Can he read Latin?_

“I won’t have to if you don’t do anything funny,” Oikawa says casually. Tetsurou stiffens, and Oikawa chuckles in a way that makes Tetsurou’s heart beat just that tiny bit faster. “I’m kidding. You’re just so nervous that it’s making me nauseous, so I figured I should reassure you.”

“Yeah, well,” Tetsurou shrugs, and he sees Oikawa’s eyes flick from his face to his shoulder, “It’s not every day that I follow a stranger into his basement.”

“Oh, no? That was a personal favorite pastime of mine when I was alive, actually. Nobody’s legally allowed to kill you in their basement, you know.”

“Oh, ha ha.”

Oikawa smiles again, and Tetsurou thinks that it’s just not fair that someone is allowed to look like that – especially not when they’re wearing pajamas in the afternoon. He bumps ‘cuss Suga out’ higher up on his to-do list.

“Now, I think I have a pretty good idea already, but care to share why it is that my dearest Suga has sent you all the way out here?”

Oikawa leans forward in his chair, looking expectantly at Tetsurou. Tetsurou clutches the fabric of the left sleeve of his t-shirt.

“I guess I should just-” He takes a deep breath and pulls the sleeve of his t-shirt down, exposing the bumpy, raised skin of the scars across his shoulder, “Show you.”

Oikawa’s eyes roam the ridges and dips of the scars, following the lines all the way to where they start to taper off and eventually blend into Tetsurou’s normal skin. He furrows his brows slightly, seemingly considering something, and then he sits up straight in his chair again and looks Tetsurou dead in the eye.

“That’s a curse.” He says matter-of-factly, and Tetsurou blinks at him a few times, unable to fully process those words.

“Sorry?”

“A curse,” Oikawa repeats, “A pretty strong one, too. It was meant to kill you, by the looks of it.”

Tetsurou feels like all the wind has been knocked out of him.

He’s remembering that game – the blow that knocked him off his feet, the immediate searing pain in his shoulder that blinded him for a moment for how intense it was, and how he couldn’t remember who it was that he was playing afterward. How Suga had spent hours that first day trying out everything he knew to make it better, only to have Tetsurou pass out from the pain again every few minutes.

Meant to kill him sounds about right.

“Hey, are you okay?” Oikawa asks him after a long moment, a gentle hand reaching for his forearm.

But then Oikawa’s fingertips make contact with his skin, and suddenly Tetsurou being cursed is the least of either of their problems.


	4. Something Just Happened

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry this took so long. It just so happened that the universe had it in for me specifically last month, and I suppose that it's a testament to my own stubbornness that I managed to write this at all after that. It's shorter than I'd wanted, much later than I'd wanted, and entirely different from what I'd imagined, but I hope you'll enjoy it just the same anyway. I appreciate the words of encouragement very much, and because I don't imagine that anything worse could possibly happen to me, the chapters will probably be rather timely from now on (exams be damned). Thank you for reading, and I hope you like it!

Tooru remembers more often than he’d like the particular shade of blue that people’s lips turn once they’ve stopped breathing. A memory, crystal clear to him even two and a half years later, comes to him the second his fingers make contact with Kuro’s forearm – a memory of that shade of blue, and of the pale skin that surrounded it, three shades lighter than Tooru thought it ought to have been. He doesn’t know why and doesn’t dare think about it too much, but the only thought that runs through his mind at that moment is, _he’s so warm_.

It’s like some sort of shift has happened, and Tooru considers for a second that maybe he feels that way because he really can’t remember the last time he touched someone like this. Years ago, now. It’s almost funny in a morbid sort of way, but also not at all surprising. He had no way of knowing that any of the last times were going to end up being last times, so of course he wouldn’t remember them. It does hurt a little to think about, though.

Tooru looks up and his and Kuro’s eyes meet. Kuro’s got the same look in his eyes that Tooru does – something like realization, though Tooru doesn’t know what that realization is. All he knows is that something has changed, and that only the two of them know that.

The feeling is difficult to make sense of. It feels the same level of ‘not quite right’ that Tooru imagines he would feel were all of his furniture shifted an inch to the left overnight – a strange sensation of, ‘everything has changed, but also not really’ and he finds, staring into sharp hazel-colored eyes that seem somehow familiar, that he kind of likes things better this way.

“Are you-?” Kuro starts to say, just as Tooru was saying, “Did you-?”

Tooru watches Kuro’s eyes become warmer with a hint of a smile.

“You first.” He says, and suddenly, Tooru doesn’t remember what it is that he wanted to say a moment ago. He doesn’t even know what just happened, never mind how to describe it without sounding like a lunatic.

‘Hey, did you, mayhaps, experience a sort of… shift in your consciousness?’ or maybe, ‘Experience any unexplainable changes to the fabric of your very soul just now?’ might do were Tooru a little further off the deep end, and he does consider that this event may just have pushed him there, but his sense of shame and common sense kick in at the last second, and what he actually ends up saying is, “Something just happened.”

Kuro’s gaze flicks downwards, settling on where Tooru’s hand is still resting on his forearm, and Tooru remembers all at once that _his hand is still resting on Kuro’s forearm_ , so he retracts it quickly. His fingertips are tingling, he realizes as he clutches his hand to his chest – tingling like he’s just touched an exposed wire, pure electricity climbing up his arm. It doesn’t hurt, but it does feel strange, and Tooru wonders if Kuro’s arm is tingling like that too.

“Something just happened.” Kuro repeats slowly, nodding in agreement as he brings his gaze back up to meet Tooru’s, looking somewhat relieved, “Alright. Okay. At least it wasn’t just me.”

_Yeah, at least it wasn’t just me._

Tooru sighs. He doesn’t even know where to start with this. He allows his hand to fall into his lap, the tingling still very much there but getting noticeably less intense with every passing second, and stares at it for a good, long while. It looks the same – all of the lines exactly where they should be, his skin unmarred by the contact. He clenches and unclenches it without difficulty, squinting at his open palm once again.

When the lines of his palm start blurring together, his mind completely blank, another hand enters his field of vision. Long, tanned fingers, short fingernails amateurly painted with chipped black nail polish. Tooru remembers a time when he used to paint his fingernails like that. Well, not _exactly_ like that. He’d like to think that he was rather good at it – his freshly painted nails always neat and shiny, a different color every other week.

His sister had taught him how to paint his nails properly when he was rather young – seven or eight, maybe – and he’d found the skill rather useful in the world of witches, where most found the time to do it. He still doesn’t know why, and he supposes that it doesn’t really matter, but looking at his now bare fingernails, chewed to nubs as a result of his unfortunate new nervous habit, he misses it.

“May I?” Kuro asks, snapping Tooru out of his nostalgic thoughts. He’s holding his hand out, and Tooru looks at it dumbly for a few seconds before he finally realizes why.

_He wants to try it again._

Tooru nods tentatively, bringing his own hand up to meet Kuro’s in the space between them, holding his breath the whole time.

Nothing happens.

It’s just his hand in Kuro’s, with Kuro’s fingers curled delicately around Tooru’s, as though he were afraid they might crumble to dust if he were to apply any pressure.

Nothing happens, and yet neither of them thinks to pull away.

Tooru frowns, tapping his pen against the page of an old notebook he’s had since he was in school. It’s the one Suga gave him as a good luck charm for exams in their second year – pale green on the outside and completely blank save the note Suga wrote on the first page because Tooru never had the heart to write in it before now. He’s out of scrap paper, and while he did have half a mind to leave Kuro here to make a trip down to the store, he ultimately decided against it and bit the bullet on tarnishing the book.

All he’s got written down so far are the words, _‘Contact curse??’_ and, _‘NB: Buy more scrap paper!’_

“What’s a contact curse?” Kuro asks, leaning over Tooru’s shoulder to read what he’s written and giving him a good fright in the process.

“Don’t sneak up on people like that!” Tooru scolds, putting his pen down and swinging his chair around to face his guest. Kuro’s bored, evidently – tired of walking around the room reading book titles and closely examining cobwebs. Tooru can’t say that he finds that sort of thing awfully exciting either, but he’s grown rather used to finding unique ways to entertain himself over the past two years, so it probably wouldn’t bother him nearly as much as it does Kuro.

Kuro raises an expectant eyebrow, and Tooru sighs, “It’s a type of curse.”

Kuro snorts a laugh, “Yeah, I figured.”

He’s taken to leaning against one of Tooru’s larger bookshelves, paying no mind to the precariously perched encyclopedias on the higher shelves.

Tooru folds his arms over his chest, “If you really care to know-”

“I do.” Kuro interrupts, a cheeky lopsided grin on his face.

Tooru considers having one of the encyclopedias fall near where Kuro is standing as a warning, but he opts for a good old-fashioned eyeroll to get his point across instead.

“It’s a type of curse that can only be put on someone if the caster touches them directly.” Tooru explains, and – to his credit – Kuro really does look like he wants to know, “It’s kind of a tricky condition to meet, considering that most people aren’t too close to anyone who might want to curse them, but they’re a lot more powerful than long-range curses, so… high risk, high reward, I guess.”

“How do you know all that?”

“What? About curses?”

“Yeah,” Kuro pulls a book off of the shelf behind him and flips through it before putting it down again in entirely the wrong place, “I never learned shit about curses.”

“Oh, yeah.” Tooru says, levitating the misplaced book back to where it had been originally, “You wouldn’t have. A lot of that stuff isn’t exactly… _kosher_ , if you know what I mean.”

“As in you’re not supposed to know it.”

“You’re smarter than you look.”

“Hey, I’m plenty smart,” Kuro says immediately, and he sounds just offended enough for Tooru to find it amusing.

“I never said you weren’t,” Tooru reassures him, biting back a smile, “I just said that you don’t look it.”

Kuro picks up another book and immediately puts it back down in the wrong place, making eye contact with Tooru the entire time.

“Whatever. Brushing your hair and washing your jeans more than twice a year never raised anyone’s IQ anyway.”

Tooru raises an eyebrow, “You don’t brush your hair or wash your jeans?”

“That’s not the point.”

Tooru pauses, giving his guest an up and down look.

“I can tell.”

“You’re kind of an asshole, you know that?” Kuro says, though his handsome lopsided grin has made a return.

“I’ve been told,” Tooru replies, finding it increasingly difficult not to break into a grin himself as the bastard of a man in his basement removes two more books from their rightful places.

Tooru slides a glass of water down his kitchen counter with a flick of his wrist, the ice cubes clinking together almost musically. The glass stops right in front of Kuro, who picks it up and mumbles a quiet thank you. The sun is setting outside, the light pouring in through the few uncovered windows tinting Tooru’s kitchen and living room a range of pretty pinks and oranges and casting long shadows across the wooden floor. The cottage looks nice like that, Tooru thinks. Much nicer than usual, anyway, even with all of the buckets still set below dormant leaks in the roof.

“So…” Kuro says, putting his glass down and watching droplets of water slide down the side.

He’s waiting for something, Tooru knows. Waiting for the conclusion to Tooru’s hours of work digging through obscure Latin textbooks and some of his own years-old memories.

“I can fix it.”

Kuro’s head snaps up, “You can?”

Tooru nods, putting his own half-empty glass down in the sink.

“Holy shit,” Kuro whispers, like he hadn’t let himself believe for even a second before now that it was even a possibility. “That’s incredible. You’re incredible.”

Tooru’s eyes widen, and he thinks that it’s definitely a good thing that he put his glass down because he’d probably have dropped it if he hadn’t.

“You can’t just go around saying stuff like that.” He mumbles, Kuro’s comment making his cheeks feel hotter than he’d care to admit.

“Like what?”

“Never mind, just…” Tooru sighs, “Don’t get too excited yet. It’s going to take a while.”

Kuro doesn’t ask, ‘how long?’ like Tooru thought he would, and that’s for the best, Tooru supposes. He doesn’t exactly have an estimate as things stand – all he knows is that undoing a curse that intricate is going to take a while, and that isn’t even to mention the fact that he might have to spend extra time reviving dead tissue afterward. Strangely, he doesn’t mind. In fact, a part of him that he hadn’t known was still alive and kicking has got him thinking ridiculous things like, _I wonder when I’m going to be able to see him again_. He swats the thoughts away as quickly they pop up, only to have them resurface again, so he resigns himself to at least a month of psychological torture at the hands of the handsome young witch Suga was kind enough to deliver to his doorstep when he least expected it.

“Oh, by the way,” Tooru says at the door. Kuro blinks at him curiously as he twirls his car keys around his finger. “If you see Suga, tell him that I said, ‘Fuck you, you know what you did.’ He’ll understand.”

Kuro chuckles, and it’s the most pleasant sound Tooru has heard in years.

“Roger that. I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear from you.”

“He’d better be,” Tooru says, wishing that he wasn't too much of a coward to say all of the things he really wants to say. _I miss you_ and _forgive me_ and _I know I promised you I wouldn’t do anything stupid, but just this one time I hope you’ll understand._ But all of those sincere words die on his tongue as he watches Kuro brush away the hair that the light evening breeze has blown into his eyes, and what he ends up saying instead is, “Not just any old friend would make the effort to curse him from beyond the grave, you know.”

The words sound heavier than he’d intended, and he sees Kuro’s brows furrow ever so slightly. He looks like he wants to say something, or maybe ask all of the questions Tooru knows he’s been holding back out of politeness, but he doesn’t.

Instead, he smiles a weak little smile and says, “No, I suppose not.”

Tooru takes a deep breath, trying to compose himself as best he can.

“Yeah, um… see you next week then.” He says, looking down at his sock-clad feet and feeling a little weird about the holes he’s worn through the fabric.

“I’ll look forward to it.” Kuro tells him, and he sounds like he means it.

 _Me too_ , Tooru thinks as he watches Kuro climb into that ugly little mustard yellow car.

“More than I probably should.”


	5. Forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year everyone! It seems like far too many of these are being prefaced with, "Sorry I've been gone for x months!" lately, but despite my best intentions, it seems life always has other plans. I've had this in drafts for three months now in various forms - none of which I was happy with - but I think I can finally call this acceptable by my own wack standards. Huge thanks to my best friend, who reads draft after draft and puts up with my nonsense even when he has every right not to. Huge thanks to anyone who might stick around in the new year despite my garbage posting schedule and even worse self-esteem. I love and appreciate you more than you could ever know, and I remember your sweet comments in hard times, which is most of the reason I manage to write at all. Thank you so, so much, and I hope you enjoy this one! Here's to a good year <3

Keiji opens their eyes to a now-familiar white ceiling. It’s still dark out – somewhere around three or four in the morning, if Keiji were to guess – and the only light in the room is spilling in through a gap in the curtains, silvery moonlight casting shadows across the room’s horribly outdated furniture. It’s completely silent save Koutarou’s even breathing and the occasional sound of shifting sheets, and Keiji considers for a moment whether or not they should simply close their eyes and go back to sleep.

But only for a moment.

As much as they’d have loved to ignore the presence at their door in favor of a few hours more sleep, it seems to Keiji as though the problem will not be solved until they personally do something about it.

The old bed squeaks as Keiji slips out of it, careful not to make too much noise just in case Koutarou has decided to become a light sleeper out of nowhere. He doesn’t so much as stir as Keiji pads over to the door, much to their relief – they’d rather not involve him in this, if at all possible.

Keiji glances at him once more before pulling the door open and stepping out into the hallway, unsure and uneasy but comforted somewhat by Koutarou’s sound sleeping.

“What do you want?”

The hallway is dimly lit by a few yellowed bulbs sticking out of the ceiling and the floor is covered by the single ugliest carpet Keiji has ever laid eyes on. It’s clearly a few decades old, the overly-busy pattern faded almost completely into a dirty-looking dark beige that Keiji can’t imagine was its original color.

“Found me already have we, angel?”

Tendou’s lips stretch into a grin that seems too big for their face, revealing a set of sharpened teeth that never fail to make Keiji’s skin crawl at the sight of them.

“You materialized outside my door.” Keiji reminds Tendou matter-of-factly, choosing to focus on the flakes of greyish paint peeling away from the wall just behind Tendou’s head instead of looking them in the eye.

“Ah, yes. Details, details.” Tendou says, waving their hand dismissively. “How’s the boy toy, by the way? I did try ever so hard not to interrupt his sleep, you know. Have you ever tried sleeping, angel? It’s a terrific waste of time.”

Keiji narrows their eyes. There are a lot of things they don’t particularly like about Tendou, but the way the word _angel_ drips out of their mouth one sickly-sweet syllable at a time makes Keiji want to throttle them.

“What do you want?” Keiji repeats, firmer this time.

“Always so touchy, aren’t we? I thought we were friends!”

“We aren’t.”

“You wound me. I mean well, I really do.” Tendou insists, though Keiji highly doubts that. “I only wanted to find out how the search is going! There was rather a large disturbance earlier – not that I have to tell you that. I’m sure you felt it for yourself.”

Keiji nods, though they can’t help but think Tendou’s words a little understated. Keiji has never felt anything like it – a burst of pure energy that would put even any successful summoning to shame. They wouldn’t be surprised if a particularly vigilant divine being on the other side of the country had felt it.

“Amazing, wasn’t it?” Tendou beams, “I knew the witch must be powerful, but this is something else. How fantastic for you, angel.”

Keiji opens their mouth to reply, only to be interrupted by the sound of a doorknob being rattled followed by the distinct creak of a door opening. Both Keiji and Tendou watch as the woman three doors down from them makes her way toward the bathrooms down the hall, seemingly unaware of their gaze.

“I think you should leave, Tendou,” Keiji says, eyes still trained on the door the woman disappeared into. Being seen with Tendou certainly wouldn’t be a deal-breaker, but it _would_ be horribly inconvenient considering the other demon’s apparent complete lack of desire to present to others as anything other than demonic.

Tendou snaps back to attention, their intense gaze falling on Keiji once more. Despite the smile still on their face, Keiji gets the sense that Tendou is no longer very happy with them from the way the air around the two of them seems to cool down rather rapidly.

“That’s hardly the way to treat someone who went out of their way to help you, is it?” Tendou asks, their slightly larger frame seeming to stretch and contort to fill up the whole area, looming over Keiji. “Not all demons are as nice as I am, angel, that’s a fact. All I’m asking of you in return for an eternity with your beloved is to keep me posted on the witch hunt.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Tendou asks, “Well, why not?”

Keiji raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

“But,” Tendou concedes, lifting a long, spindly finger to Keiji’s chest and giving it a poke that Keiji assumes is meant to be interpreted as playful but that seems more threatening just by virtue of Tendou being overall somewhat off-putting, “Because it’s you, I’ll have you know that I have rather a personal stake in whether or not you find this witch.”

“Which is?”

Tendou’s grin widens, “Nosy today, aren’t we? I like that. I can feel us bonding.”

Keiji doesn’t say anything for fear of having a response misinterpreted as affirmation of their alleged ‘bonding.’

“Let’s just say,” Tendou continues, “That there’s a reason I know this witch exists at all, and that it has something to do with a very-nearly-successful attempt at something very few have managed before. Not too many witches practicing the dark arts anymore. They’re a dying breed, unfortunately. I have a feeling, though, that this one might just be powerful enough to help me regain something I’ve lost.”

Keiji wants to ask, _what? what did you lose?_ but the way Tendou says the word _something_ makes them hesitate just long enough for Tendou to wave off their vague explanation.

“But that’s not actually all that important, angel.”

Keiji’s eye twitches.

“It’s Akaashi. Keiji.” They correct pointedly, folding their arms across their chest. 

“Boy toy pick that one out for you?” Tendou teases, a sadistic glint in their eye, “It’s pretty. Suits you. Then, _Akaashi_ , I’ll be seeing you. Keep me posted.”

Tendou dematerializes into thin air before Keiji can get another word out – which would be a relief if it weren’t so annoying – and it’s all Keiji can do to sigh and slip back into bed like nothing happened, checking very briefly before closing their eyes that Koutarou is still breathing.

When Keiji’s eyes flutter open again a few hours later, they’re a lot happier about the circumstances. Mid-morning sunlight is pouring in through the gap in the curtains, and Keiji can feel rough fingertips ghosting over the scars on their shoulder blades, tracing the edges of the damaged skin with practiced precision. They can hear Koutarou humming quietly to himself as he draws the lines – the same song that he always hums when he’s particularly happy, always a little off-key. Keiji doesn’t mind it, though – they prefer Koutarou’s version of that song anyway.

“Mmm, that tickles Koutarou.” They mumble into their pillow, a small smile creeping its way onto their face. Koutarou’s fingers stop their delicate little dance, and Keiji takes the opportunity to turn over to face him, bringing a hand up to rest on his cheek.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.” He whispers, turning his head to kiss the palm of Keiji’s hand. The sunlight makes his eyes look like they’re glowing – a warm, brilliant gold that looks to Keiji almost otherworldly.

“I don’t mind. I’d probably have woken up soon anyway.” Keiji reassures him, “You’re up early, though.”

Koutarou nods, “Thought maybe we could get started a little earlier. Y’know, cause you managed to narrow it down so much yesterday.”

Keiji smiles, “Wouldn’t that be more of an excuse to get a _later_ start than usual?”

“I don’t know, I guess I just thought… you know, since I know this whole thing has been stressing you out and-”

Keiji frowns, “Koutarou, I don’t want you to feel like you have to do this for my sake.”

“I _don’t_ , it’s just-”

“You know that you can change your mind at any time, right? It’s totally up to you. In fact, maybe a little more time to think would be-”

“Keiji.” Koutarou interrupts, looking meaningfully into Keiji’s eyes, “Stop.”

“But-”

“I’ve made up my mind already.”

Keiji’s frown deepens, “I know, but-”

“No buts. You worry too much.”

_You don’t worry enough._

“It’s just…” Keiji trails off, their thumb running across the prickly morning stubble on Koutarou’s cheek. “It’s just that forever is a long time.”

The look in Koutarou's eyes softens.

“Forever _is_ a long time.” He agrees, “And that’s exactly why I wanna do this. If there’s even a chance that I could spend forever with you, I’ll do whatever it takes, okay?”

Keiji searches his face for a moment, looking for even the slightest hesitation. Koutarou remains unwavering, just as he has every time they’ve had this conversation.

“Okay.”

Koutarou smiles, tucking a stray dark curl behind Keiji’s ear.

“A later start, huh?” He asks.

“Only if you want.”

“I’m sure I could figure out something for us to do for an hour or two.”

“Mmm, I’m sure you could.”

The road ahead seems to stretch on forever. Tall, dark trees loom over them, bordering the road so thickly that Keiji can’t see a thing beyond them. They’re tall enough to almost block out the sky, and Keiji can’t help but feel anxious at the way they seem to be leaning over, looking about ready to fall over and crush Koutarou’s car with the two of them in it.

They’ve been driving for over two hours, and Keiji can feel frustration building within them with every passing second.

Koutarou's brows are furrowed as he looks over at Keiji every few seconds, “We can take a break if you need-”

“I’m fine.”

He clamps his mouth shut, and Keiji briefly thinks that that’ll be the end of it, but Koutarou seemingly has other ideas. He slows the car to a crawl, pulling over onto the side of the road.

Keiji frowns, “What are you-”

Koutarou shifts his entire body to look at Keiji, “Everything is going to be fine.”

“I _know_ that, but-”

“Keiji.”

The sound of their name coming out of his mouth gives them pause. He sounds so serious, his handsome features twisted with concern.

“Everything is going to be fine, I promise.” He says again, taking one of Keiji’s hands in his. “If we don’t figure it out today, there’s still tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and-”

“You don’t know that.”

Koutarou blinks, startled either by Keiji’s words or the fragile manner in which they were spoken. Perhaps both. Keiji is surprised too, unsure why the words came out the way that they did. Why they had wavered in the face of Koutarou’s unyielding belief in a set of tomorrows that Keiji has not yet allowed themself to hope for.

The look on Koutarou’s face is complex. It’s dark and vulnerable and sympathetic all at once, and Keiji feels suffocated by it. They can feel his heartbeat through his hand, ever so slightly faster than usual, and they feel suffocated by it. Suffocated by reminders of his humanness, and by the ever-present worry that they're running out of time.

“It’s okay to be scared,” Koutarou tells them, wisdom beyond his years in those words. Keiji feels that in him, sometimes. Wisdom alongside his innocence and enthusiasm and empathy.

Keiji shakes their head weakly, “I shouldn’t be the one who’s scared.”

“Who said that?”

“I… I’m not the one who might die, Koutarou.”

Koutarou’s grip tightens slightly – just enough for Keiji to notice – but the look on his face remains as it was.

“So?” He says, “I’m not the one who has to spend eternity alone if that happens. I’m pretty sure that’s scarier.”

_It is. It’s terrifying._

“You’re not scared to die?”

Koutarou searches their face for a moment, and Keiji wonders what it is that he’s thinking. It’s a simple question – one that Keiji has never had to ask themself but one that Koutarou certainly has. A fundamentally human question.

Koutarou’s gaze falls to their joined hands. He turns Keiji’s palm up, running his index finger along the lines.

“Everyone dies, Keiji.” He says softly, the finality in his statement making Keiji’s throat feel tight. “Dying isn’t the scary part. Not really, anyway. I think… for some people it’s- it’s the after, you know? I don’t… that never really scared me. I didn’t think about it too much, growing up. I just… _knew_ I was going to die. I guess for me it’s scarier to think that I’d be leaving you behind. I mean, if I live to like, eighty or something, I’ve got you, you know? I’ve got all those years with you, and for me… for humans, sixty years is a long time. But for you… that’s a tiny fraction of a lifetime.”

He pauses his line drawing at the base of Keiji’s thumb, looking up at them through those long lashes of his with a sad little smile on his lips, “And I think sometimes that it would be okay if… If I could live my eighty years and you could move on and... maybe even forget me someday.”

Keiji frowns, “I’ll never forget you.”

 _It’s ridiculous to even imply that I could_ , they want to say, but the look Koutarou is giving them stops them before the words can escape their lips.

“But that’s worse, isn’t it?” He asks, heartache coloring his words, “I hate thinking that I’d die, and you’d spend forever mourning me, you know? That’s… I hate that. I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.”

“I know.” He sighs, fitting his hand over Keiji’s and intertwining their fingers, “And I know that I’m happier to have met you because you’re… well, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Keiji. But if us meeting means that you’d have to live forever without me and that you’d spend forever mourning me, I’d… I’d rather we’d never met.”

So many things run through Keiji's mind as Koutarou talks - so, so many things that they hardly know what to do with all of it - but, in the end, all they can manage is a simple utterance of his name. It's a prayer, almost. For Keiji, being with Koutarou has always felt a little like praying, like religion. And they want to say, _mourning you would be the greatest privilege of my life._ They want to say, _I'd kill for you_ , and, _I'd die for you,_ and, _I will never regret knowing you_. They want to be able to express to him in words the feeling of overwhelming love within them, and they want to be able to tell him that he's the only true purpose that they've ever known. But all that comes out of their mouth is his name, soft like a prayer.

He seems to understand it anyway.

“Whatever happens, I love you, okay?" He says, still holding Keiji's hand like a lifeline, "If we find the witch and I become a demon, or if none of that happens and I die tomorrow, or sixty years from now. No matter what, I’ll love you. I just want you to be okay, if-”

Keiji stops him mid-sentence with a kiss, desperate and messy, before pulling back and looking him in the eye.

“We’ll find the witch.” They tell him, choosing to believe in Koutarou's tomorrows despite their fears.

“Okay, then. We’ll find them.”


	6. Six Feet Deep

Koushi knows that some things should be kept secret. It’s an unfortunate reality of living under the rule of a council that won’t tolerate dissenters, won’t tolerate even a slightly different way of thinking. Koushi has known his entire life, as every witch born for the past two hundred years has known, that some things should be kept secret, buried six feet deep, never to be uncovered or uttered out loud but never to be forgotten, either.

“You look like you’re guilty of something.”

Koushi starts, his phone clattering to the ground. Daichi frowns, bending down to pick it up and placing it gently into Koushi’s still-open hand.

“Jesus, Suga. You okay?”

“Oh, yes.” Koushi says, trying to muster a smile, “Sorry, I just… didn’t hear you come in.”

Daichi sighs and plops himself down right beside Koushi, the couch cushion caving slightly and causing Koushi to fall naturally into his side. He’s warm and his side melds so perfectly into Koushi’s that Koushi isn’t quite sure where he ends and Daichi starts, but he doesn’t mind at all.

“What’re you thinking so hard about?” Daichi asks softly, intertwining their fingers.

“I don’t know.” Koushi lies, “It’s nothing.”

Daichi frowns, turning his head slightly to look at Koushi.

“Since when do you not tell me things?” He asks.

“I don’t… not tell you things, necessarily.” Koushi lies again. As much as he hates it, there are certain things Koushi cannot tell his partners – things that could get them into trouble. Or, well, _more_ trouble in Koushi’s case.

Daichi’s blinks, waiting patiently for Koushi to finish his thought.

“It’s just that- I don’t know.” Koushi sighs, “I guess I should be over it by now.”

Daichi’s frown deepens, “Over what?”

“Do we really have to talk about this?”

“If you’re going to keep frowning like that, yes.”

Daichi lifts his free hand to smooth the wrinkles Koushi hadn’t even known were on his forehead.

Koushi sighs again, “You make my life hard.”

“Only because I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The room falls silent save the faint ticking of the kitchen clock a room away, and Koushi stares out the window, allowing his head to fall onto Daichi’s shoulder as he looks out over their vast, perfectly manicured lawn and thinks rather sourly and not for the first time that this place is far too big for just three people.

“I’m just thinking about Tooru again.” He says, and he could swear that the ticking of the clock stops with those words, and the silence becomes truly silent for the first time. He doesn’t lift his head to see the look on Daichi’s face, but he feels his partner stiffen against him at the mention of that name and then slowly relax again.

“Oh,” Daichi says finally, bringing the sound back into the room all at once.

Koushi lifts his head to look at him.

“Oh?” He asks, eyebrows raised.

“No, no, it’s not a bad oh!” Daichi says immediately, “It’s, uh… it’s an, ‘I don’t know what to say because the pain of losing a friend so young is one that is unimaginable to me, but I love and support you and your feelings even if I can’t fully understand them,’ oh.”

Daichi looks so sincere that Koushi feels his chest tighten, the earnestness in those pretty brown eyes far too much for him to take. It’s like grieving Tooru all over again. Koushi hadn’t been able to look Tooru’s family in the eye for the very same reason – both Daichi and Tooru’s family believe Tooru is dead, and Koushi can’t do anything to change that.

“Oh, well if that’s how it is.” He says, his voice shockingly even.

“It is.”

Koushi lays his head on Daichi’s shoulder again, his chest still aching with grief he doesn’t feel he deserves.

“Thank you.”

“Of all of the things I expected you to say when you got back here, that certainly wasn’t one,” Koushi says, shifting slightly in his seat. There’s a box filled with CDs on the couch next to him, which he’d sneakily taken a peek into while Kuroo was scratching around in his freezer for some ice cubes.

Kuroo grins, “Oh no? And what did you expect me to say?”

“Well, firstly that he’s hot.”

“He is.”

“And secondly that he can fix whatever is going on with your shoulder.”

“He can. It’s a curse, by the way.”

Koushi lets out his held breath. The weight of the world feels lifted from his shoulders. He hadn’t lied – he really had been expecting Kuroo to say that Tooru could fix his shoulder – but the relief he feels is palpable. As much as he may believe in his old friend (and that is perhaps too much), there was always a chance that Tooru couldn’t fix it, and that chance has been keeping Koushi up at night.

“And Tooru knows about curses. Of course he does.” Koushi says, laughter bubbling up in his chest.

_Of course he does._

“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find something he doesn’t know about, if what I saw is anything to go by,” Kuroo replies.

“I’m glad to know he’s still a smartass.” Koushi chuckles, finding it impossible not to think of Kuroo’s words from only a few days ago.

_Nobody knows everything, Suga._

“Smartass isn’t even the half of it,” Kuroo huffs, but there’s a fondness there that Koushi can’t ignore. A fondness that Koushi is more than a little relieved to see, even if he knows deep down that none of this could possibly lead to anything. It’s just nice to see Kuroo with some light in his eyes again.

Kuroo gets up to refill their glasses, almost tripping over one of the boxes on his way back to the couch. His entire apartment is filled with boxes – the one occupying the seat next to Koushi far from an exception. They’ve been a mainstay in this apartment since Kuroo moved in, boxes upon boxes occupying almost every available surface and a decent chunk of the floor. Koushi stopped offering to help him unpack after two or three months, resigning himself to the sad truth of the matter – that Kuroo won’t unpack the boxes until he’s ready to do it, no matter how much Koushi hates to see him live like this.

Koushi glances again at the box beside him, a label on the side in big, purple sharpie letters catching his attention.

_Morisuke’s CDs_

_**DO NOT TOUCH** _

“Suga?”

Koushi tears his eyes away from the box, “Huh?”

“I can, uh- I can move the box if it’s… you know.” Kuroo says, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Bothering you.”

Koushi’s eyes widen. He lifts his hands in front of him, “No, no, really it’s… I was just, um… Looking.”

Kuroo looks unconvinced, his awkward little smile making Koushi’s heart ache.

“I’ll, um… I’m working on it. The whole,” Kuroo says, gesturing vaguely around them, “Moving in… thing.”

Koushi nods, trying to think of something to say and ultimately coming up short.

He sighs, “Nothing’s easy anymore, huh?”

“I don’t know if it ever was,” Kuroo replies.

“Yeah, I’m starting to wonder about that myself.”

When Koushi had asked what Kuroo thought of Tooru, he’d replied, ‘I don’t know. I feel like he made me into a different person.’

And he seemed it. Koushi had noticed from the second Kuroo opened his door that something had changed, that Kuroo seemed more himself than he had in months.

It felt almost like magic.

Koushi flips the page of a book he never thought he’d be reading, the paper yellowed and curling inward at the edges. It feels almost like each page could crumble into dust in his hands if he’s not careful. The book takes up a fair amount of his lap, brown and traditionally leather-bound in the way many old witch books are. It weighs about the same as a large toddler if Koushi had to guess, and the fact that he can feel his legs slowly going numb from the weight of it is a testament to that.

“Koushi?”

A warm hand squeezes Koushi’s shoulder gently to get his attention.

Koushi smiles apologetically, “Sorry, were you calling me?”

Asahi shakes his head, “I just wanted to know if you wanted any tea.”

“Have I told you I love you yet today?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

“I love you.” Koushi sings, blowing an over-the-top kiss at his partner.

“Love you too.” Asahi chuckles, “What are you reading?”

Koushi looks down at the book, open on a page about the phenomenon of full witches.

“Um… just some magic stuff.” He replies vaguely, hoping Asahi won’t ask any more questions.

Asahi looks over Koushi’s shoulder, reading the contents of the pages spread over Koushi’s lap rather intently.

“Full witch…” Asahi muses. “Wasn’t your friend a full witch?”

Koushi freezes for a second at the mention of Tooru, and realization dawns on Asahi’s face all at once.

“Sorry, I-” He begins, his typical worried frown on his face.

“No, really, it’s fine.” Koushi interrupts, smiling at him reassuringly. “Yeah, he was. The first one in a century.”

Koushi can still remember all the newspaper articles that came out about him. _First Full Witch in a Century Raised by Humans_ , and _Prodigy Witch with Affinity For All Magic Born Human_. They always had to add that part – the human thing. It was simultaneously the worst and most interesting thing about him to them. No matter how hard he worked, no matter which feats he achieved, he would always be just what the headlines said he was.

“He was really something special,” Asahi says, pulling Koushi out of his thoughts.

“Yeah,” He says, smiling despite himself, “He liked to think so too.”

Asahi squeezes his shoulder once more before leaving the room, and Koushi keeps reading his behemoth of a book until he has his tea in hand.

Tea that he very nearly drops not two minutes later.

Koushi's eyes fly rapidly over the words.

_Split dreamscape. Contact. Shared memories. Soulmate._

“What’s the matter?” Asahi asks, having startled at Koushi’s outburst.

Koushi stands and pushes the book onto the floor, the heavy thud of it hitting the wooden boards (and his foot, but he manages to keep a semi-straight face about it) and making Asahi wince. Nevertheless, Koushi soldiers on, heading straight out of the library without another word.

“Where are you going?” Daichi asks when Koushi is on his way out the door, car keys in hand, and one and a half shoes on.

“I need to go see someone.” He replies simply, slipping his second shoe on.

“Hopefully not for anything illegal.” Daichi jokes, handing Koushi his umbrella despite the blue skies.

Koushi winces internally but smiles and kisses Daichi on the cheek before he leaves.

Daichi's car is parked next to Koushi's in the driveway, big and white and intimidating in a way that sends chills up his spine every time he sees it. It's the car of a council member, and Koushi can't help but feel that it looks wrong here. Can't help but feel that Daichi shouldn't be driving that car, even if he knows it's for the greater good. Even if he knows Daichi isn't like them.

Koushi looks back and smiles again, waving back at Daichi before pulling out of the driveway.

_Illegal isn't even the half of it, Daichi, and I won't get either of you involved in that._

Koushi knows that some things should be kept secret, but that doesn’t stop him from hating every goddamn second of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so the world is one fire. And I haven't been able to write a damn thing since January. Sorry about that - really and truly, I wish I'd been able to put this up so much sooner. I wish I'd been able to write it so much sooner. That being said, though, I kind of like this one!! I finally managed to get across some of the ideas and exposition I wanted out of the way in a way that isn't horribly boring expo dumping. Anyway, please enjoy it!! Thank you so much for reading <3


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